I didn’t even want to ask the question. Because I was the leader I was afraid to show any doubt to the people around me. Despite my own fears, I felt I had no choice but to be optimistic. The company needed to raise this money and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t exist.

Fast forward to two years later. I can still remember how horrible I felt. I was uncertain of our future and I felt this incredible uneasiness in my stomach, as if the food I ate was constantly making me sick. My nights were sleepless and my energy slowly began to diminish. Each morning I woke up more tired than the last.

This is what entrepreneurs go through. Even though we choose to start companies because immense challenge is what makes us happy, we spend most of the time worrying.

What happens if no one buys our product? What happens if competitors copy us? What happens if mega-sized corporations enter our space? What happens if we don’t accept the terms on the table? What happens if we can’t deliver on our promise? What happens if we lose people’s money? What happens if we aren’t perfect? What happens if we fail?

The further you push your company to the brink of existence the more stressful these questions become. The more people you have on board the train, the more spectacular the head-on collision will be. The more promises you make and the higher you raise the expectations, the harder the fall will be.

These concerns never stop. Even for the most experienced entrepreneurs, these questions arise without clear answers, and they present unpredictable challenges that will ultimately define your journey.

So, if we know all of this, even before we start a company, why do we still worry?

Where It Comes From
Worry sits between fear and anxiety.

Being afraid is often an intense, short-term reaction to the perception of a threat. Your response to fear can be violent (fight or flight), dramatic (throwing up), or even paralyzing. And for an entrepreneur, the most terrifying outcome of all is failure. Putting people out of work, not delivering on your promise, and losing people’s money are hard enough to deal with. But worst of all is the unknown impact that failure will have on your most important currency: your reputation.

Anxiety, on the other hand, is a response to cope with future, potentially negative events. Often accompanied with nervous behavior, it can leave you restless, tired, and tense. The questions you wrestle with may not kill the company tomorrow, but their weight can add incredible strain.

I like to think of worry as the tension between fear (impacts today) and anxiety (impacts tomorrow). When you are constantly wrestling with a wide variety of unknown questions worry becomes the continuous state that you live in. It’s a feeling that doesn’t go away when you shut your laptop at night, and it doesn’t subside when you are on vacation. It’s a feeling that @bhorowitz so eloquently refers to as The Struggle.

What Not To Do
Ignore it.

Anxiety and fear are natural responses. They are an important part of developing the gut instinct that drives the key decisions that you make. But, at the same time, the intensity of these emotions can be dangerous. As you try to forget your worry, you focus on anything that is positive. Perhaps it’s a single metric that’s actually working, an aspect of the business that is safe, or the part of your role that you are most passionate about.

This is the wrong way to handle the situation. But it’s a pattern that is really hard to break, especially when it begins in the most innocent of ways. For example:

You are slow to respond to negative emails and fast to respond to positive ones.

You obsessively check metrics when they are increasing and ignore them when they are sliding.

You only send updates with super positive news.

When your significant other asks what’s wrong, you lie and say nothing.

You don’t tell anyone your fears because you are afraid to look weak.

By not tackling these emotions from the beginning, they escalate in size. The long term results can be fatigue, tension, disturbed sleep, headaches, and even panic attacks. This burden will drain you both physically and emotionally, leaving you less able to make the best decisions for the company.

What makes this especially hard to confront is that most entrepreneurs are optimists. They see the world half full, so living in a reality where the very glass they hold may be crushed by the forces around them, is exhausting. The days of the work involving just a few people in a room without a worry in the world, are long gone, replaced with a whole army of people counting on your success.

Ways To Manage It
In small steps.

Everyone has their own process for dealing with the burden they carry, but here are some things that have worked for me.

Imagine The Worst Case: working backwards from the end, what is the worst thing that could happen? You get fired, shut your company down, or have to start over. I’ve done two of the three and even though they were painful in the short term, in the long term they were important milestones in my journey. At the time I was afraid that the failure of my company would prevent me from building again. It turns out that if you are honest, reflective, and caring, people will follow you again. If you can deal with this reality, most of the worry subsides.

It’s Just Money: there was a time period when you lived at your parents’ house happily eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And although you may have a more expensive lifestyle now, it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy again with a simple life. Just because money is the metric by which most of the world judges its happiness, doesn’t mean it’s true. Having purpose, people who love you, and being healthy are all that really matter.

Breathe: into the emotion that you feel. When you worry, feel anger, or get anxious your breath shortens and your body tightens. Instead of trying to deny these feelings, sit without distraction and take deep breaths. Starting from your head, through your shoulders, into your heart, and ending in your stomach. As you breathe, really try to understand the intensity of the emotion and why it’s there. This will take a bit of practice but soon you will be able to pass the tension from your body and move on to tackling the important subjects at hand.

Prioritize Hard: don’t move your fears down your to-do list. Instead, move the hardest tasks to the top of the list and tackle them first. Reply to the emails you’re dreading, pick up the phone to deal with conflict, and be honest with your team about the realities the company faces today. The more practice you have at doing the hard things first, the easier it gets.

Remember It’s A Choice: that you make every day to run a company. No one is forcing you to be there, which means you should enjoy the journey. There is no magic finish line or point where life becomes predictable. Don’t push off weekend adventures, family time, or vacations because there is never a better time than right now.

Startups aren’t predictable and if they were you probably wouldn’t be interested. And although their constantly evolving challenges are what drive your quest for perfection, don’t underestimate the personal burden they take. The pressure to succeed is something you can’t ignore because building companies will challenge your body, mind, and soul.

Anger is one of the most paralyzing emotions. It has the ability to stop us in our tracks. Even when we attempt to cover it up, it’s obvious when anger strikes.

In a work environment there is no outlet for anger. It’s not like sports where you can take the aggression out through force. Instead, anger is boxed into a room like smoke, with no windows for it to escape. It engulfs you. And when it has nowhere to go it begins to feed on you.

Often referred to as ‘frustration,’ anger is prevalent in startups. It may not always be obvious, but the combination of passion, desire, and expectation creates an environment ripe for disappointment.

Looking back, I didn’t realize my own anger until I got fired from Contour. During my time off, anger was the emotion that took me the longest to understand. It was a feeling that I could dismiss on the surface, but deep down it was destroying me.

It wasn’t until my wife suggested meditation that I began to understand. All I knew at the time was that I couldn’t sleep, sit still, or fully enjoy the food I was eating. Even though we were traveling to some of the most amazing places, I wasn’t totally present.

Fast forward to last week when I got a cold taste of reality. I received a letter from a credit card company, claiming that I was personally responsible for the debt that my previous company racked up. Despite being absolved from the company months before it folded, I was pulled back in like a bad dream.

Even though 18 months have passed I instantly felt my body shut down. My ability to create vanished, my communication became short. I wanted to scream at the faceless representative of a company that only wanted to know how quickly I could pay the $50K bill.

My natural instinct was to ignore the feeling. I put my head down and just started working, hoping that would bury reality.

It didn’t work.

But what it did do, was to remind me that you can’t hide from anger. It can dramatically change who you are and how you treat people.

I have experienced various forms of anger as an entrepreneur. Frustration, disappointment, and even expletive-filled, all-engulfing rage. Setbacks can be so paralyzing that all you want to do is scream.

The Feeling
For me, anger shows up in two places: My head and my chest.

In my head, anger turns a crank that fuels the fire to keep thinking about the issue at hand. Whatever unexpected event sparked the flood of emotion, it gets my mind obsessing about the issues and every aspect of what happened. It shuts out everything else as I replay how this occurred, and try to translate what it means. Depending on the level of anger, this process can carry on for minutes, hours, or even days.

Eventually my mind gets tired and replaces the intense thinking with incessant worry. The more uncertain or detrimental the outcome seems, the more anxious I get.

In my chest, anger pushes everything out. At first it provides an incredible jolt of energy geared toward action. I want to scream, punch, run, or do anything that can express what I am feeling. It’s extremely difficult to sit calmly or speak softly.

The sensation of anger in my chest is obvious when it first shows up, but it becomes insidious over time. The initial energy turns to a dull feeling that dampens everything. Over time, if unaddressed, it can solidify into a heavy brick that sits right in the middle of my chest.

Dealing With It
In the past, I used to ignore any feelings of anger. I would keep working, sticking my head in the sand as if nothing had happened. My attempt to bury the emotion left me exhausted at the end of the day, which only led to sleepless nights as my mind kept turning on the problem.

Everyone has their own form of dealing with anger. Here are some ways I address it.

Space Out Your Schedule
Most entrepreneurs’ schedules look like a mangled mess of meetings. Trying to maximize every minute of the day, they only leave a few minutes between each discussion to take a breath. And most of the interactions cover such a wide array of subjects that it is extremely difficult to really dive in.

When anger strikes, it comes quick. There isn’t time to anticipate the feeling, it just happens. Whether it’s a missed expectation, a change in circumstances, or an unforeseen action by someone else, your mood quickly changes.

Most entrepreneurs try to continue on with their busy schedule; they try to ignore it. They put on their best face for the remainder of the day, but the emotion continues to stir under the surface until late in the evening when they are finally alone. This resolution process doesn’t work. It leads to stress, sleepless nights, and personal struggle.

Doing less, especially meetings, gives you time to step outside and deal with the emotion at hand, which is critical when you understand that your energy is a major part of the culture. Telling yourself that you can pretend nothing is wrong, is a lie.

Meditate
About a year ago I started using based(http://www.meditationoasis.com/podcast/listen-to-podcast/). Meditation comes in many different forms, but I found voice-based meditation helped me to stay focused during the entire 15-20 minute session.

When I started, it took several weeks to feel the subtlety of different emotions, but by practicing a few minutes everyday I began to understand what anger felt like and how to remove it. As it lodged in my chest I was able to breathe into the heavy block and let it pass through my body.

Once I stopped ignoring the anger and started embracing its energy, I was able to recover much quicker.

I understand that meditation sounds like a waste of time, but it’s not. By meditating, you are taking the best action you can to contribute to your longevity as a leader. Don’t ignore your emotions because you think you are too tough to be bothered.

Don’t Be Passive-Aggressive
You know when something isn’t right. And you know when you miss the opportunity to address it.

Ben Horowitz’s recent book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, is filled with story after story about making the hard decision. His journey is a terrifying reminder that to be successful as a leader you have to hit conflict straight on with clear, timely, and concise communication.

Passive-aggressive communication allows anger to linger. Especially among a group of highly motivated people. It’s important to address issues as they happen instead of allowing the frustration to build. Even the smallest signs of anger can multiply into a cultural divide.

I was terrible at direct communication as a first-time entrepreneur. It took a lot of practice to get to the point where I felt adequate at handling conflict. Although it’s not yet my strength, I push myself to address the emotions as they happen.

Anger sucks, but if you are leading people it’s a critical emotion to embrace. It can motivate an entire company or tear it apart, one conflict at a time.

What started as an undergraduate business plan competition became a path I never could have expected. Although I originally studied accounting, entrepreneurship taught me that creating the rules is a lot more interesting than following them.

Here are the most important lessons I have learned.

1. Be Vulnerable
When was the last time you had your heart broken?

I mean, really broken. When you lost something that was so fundamental to who you are that it still makes you sick to your stomach. Your chest still tightens up. Even the hair on your arms stands up.

It could have been a loved one, a friend, or a relationship.

Since we never prepare to lose that relationship, we put everything we have into it. We let our walls down. We let people in. We open our soul to be consumed. And at the time it feels amazing. Before the pain, there is joy. There are unforgettable adventures, laughs, and nights we’ll never forget.

Building a company is no different. To create, you have to be incredibly vulnerable. You’re forced to put yourself out there, sharing what you believe within a society where the norm isn’t to create. Instead, the norm is to get a job, to have security, and to be predictable.

But you can’t change the world by following the norm. To be a great entrepreneur you have no choice but to put yourself out there. It’s a terrifying realization.

What happens if it fails? What happens if people don’t like your idea? And what happens if people reject what you believe in?

If you remember all the times when your heart has been broken, would you have done anything differently?

I know I would have.

I may not have committed more time, but I would have valued it. I would have been present. I would have been more thoughtful about the time I spent and the quality of the experiences I shared. I would have asked the questions I was too afraid to ask and expressed the feelings I was too nervous to admit.

Most importantly I would have been more vulnerable, not less.

2. Empathize
Many people think that to be successful as an entrepreneur you have to be tenacious. It’s true. Success has a lot to do with not giving up.

But being tenacious doesn’t mean you have to be selfish.

At first there are only a few people on your team, which means that everyone involved is doing a large amount of work. And early success is often tied to just how much this small group can get done.

But, if you are successful, the company grows. And as it does you feel this incredible amount pressure to do more of what you were already doing. You pull the train with everyone on board, and you continue to work more and more hours. Life as an entrepreneur becomes stressful.

Along with the work, you realize that as the founder you are the face of the company. You are the leadership force behind it. You are the reason people joined the team. And your temperament is the nonverbal gauge for how well the company is doing.

This expectation can take an incredible toll on your personal state. But guess what? It’s not about you.

The minute you ask someone to join you on this journey, it’s about them. Whether it’s an employee, a customer, a partner, or an investor, it’s about making them successful. Your job is to enable them to maximize their involvement with your company.

The only way to do this is to empathize. Being successful requires that you listen, and that you understand their needs and put them first.

As soon as you learn to do this, an incredible amount of pressure is lifted off your shoulders. Because instead of doing everything yourself, you begin helping others to learn how to do things too.

3. Self Reflection
As an entrepreneur, you never know the answer.

It’s like solving an ever-evolving Rubik’s cube in which the rules and circumstances constantly change. It’s a battle to align the colored squares in the short term without misguiding the company over the long term.

To do this, you end up making a series of decisions that you won’t even know are right until you make another series of decisions that hopefully shed some light on your original choice.

The only way to get better at this is to accept you don’t know the answer. Once you become comfortable with uncertainty you begin looking at your business from an entirely new perspective.

You stop expecting and starting learning. You stop guaranteeing and starting making the best choice based on the information you have at hand. You stop pointing fingers and starting solving problems.

Even more importantly, you realize that to be successful in an environment where they only thing you can expect is the unexpected, you have to constantly re-evaluate.

Being a great entrepreneur is like any craft: It takes time. It takes a lot of mistakes and a lot of luck. And being self reflective is the only way to learn from all of those mistakes.

Tsunamis are fascinating. Often caused by tectonic plates shifting under the ocean floor, they can reach upwards of 120 miles in length while traveling at over 500 mph. What makes them so interesting, is that despite their massive size they are nearly undetectable at sea. Taking up to 30 minutes to pass a tsunami can often be mistaken for a large tide change. At least until it crashes on to shore with such devastating force it wipes out entire towns.

Startup success follows a similar, ambiguous path. Despite the vast amounts of research, it is hard to predict the forces that will enable a team turn their idea into a world changing movement. Even experience and unlimited capital is no guarantee of success. There are plenty of overly funded startups that have failed (i.e. Color) and plenty of unpredictable, rags to riches tales (i.e. Snapchat).

The only thing we really understand is that to build a successful startup, you need an incredible amount of momentum. The only metric that really matters, momentum haunts our dreams. It is the driver of the gears in our head that never stop turning and the catalyst that has us constantly asking…how do we go faster?

Even if you try to fake it, artificial momentum can’t be sustained. Which is why most startup success stories are not overnight. They are gradual movements, created one step at a time.

The Perception of Momentum
Momentum is often misunderstood, especially by first time founders. They falsely assume that actions such as reaching new milestones, adding more people, increasing product features, raising more money, or opening additional markets will create positive momentum.

They get stuck in a cycle of slapping on more and more, even without understanding the fragile foundation by which they stand upon. The result is the need for more money and more people to satisfy and increasing number of expectations.

We used to do this at Contour. We didn’t actually understand what was driving our momentum, so we kept adding. We mistook our growing list of work for positive momentum.

What Actually Drives Momentum
Creativity.

Building an increasing level of interest doesn’t require you to add more work, but it does require you to constantly have a fresh approach.

We watched this first hand with GoPro. They executed the same elements over and over, each time with a new perspective. Mounting their cameras on everyone and everything their creativity was a devastating force. Even with less people early on, their efforts resulted in faster growth, a cash rich business model, and market leadership.

Now as we build Moment, we are trying to execute a few things really well. Using our small team as a constraint we end up spending a lot of time talking about what we aren’t going to do. It’s a level of discipline that we never established at Contour and something we know will be hard to maintain. There is already a growing list of ideas we want to pursue.

Why Is Momentum Hard?
Momentum can make you famous or it can crush you.

On one hand, you can add so many ideas that you burden the team. Your list of key objectives becomes so long that you need bullet points to keep them organized.

On the other hand, if you don’t create enough momentum, then nobody cares. The press won’t write about you, your sales won’t grow, great employees won’t join, and investors won’t fund.

To make matters worse, you don’t know when good news will arrive, so you are quick to overhype success, while going silent during setbacks. You end up turning a gradual process into a roller coaster of big highs and the perception of big lows.

How Do You Manage It?
Momentum has a lot to do with how you control the message. It’s easy to recognize success. It’s even easier to ignore failure. And it becomes paralyzing trying to figure out how to message everything else.

It turns out that almost everything you do in a startup is down the middle. It’s really not a huge win or a massive loss. It fits in this gray area that ‘just is.’

So what do you do?

Be consistent.
Pick a cadence by which you update people (investors, customers, board members, etc) and deliver news at the same time regardless of its contents. Don’t over message big wins and ignore information that is negative. Just tell the truth.

Have Depth.
When you are dating, you don’t blurt out your feelings the first time you meet. You share just enough, but not too much. You want to keep people interested without sharing all of your creative ideas up front. Sustaining momentum has a lot to do with slowly unveiling your direction.

Subtract What Isn’t Working.
This is easier said than done. In a startup you are going to try a lot of random ideas, but just because add something, doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Building momentum requires continuous trial and error until you get the mixture of culture, creative, and communication correct. Taking away can be even more important than adding.

Be Patient.
Impacting millions of people takes time. Each person you reach is one more addition to the foundation that you are building. Don’t be surprised if it takes a long time until you fully understand the movement you are creating.

Not Every Startup Will Be A Tsunami
It’s important to recognize that not every company should become a tsunami. Some startups are meant to be small and that is okay. Size is not the ultimate metric of success, so don’t get caught up believing that you have to create a massive company. Building an organization that takes care of its people, has happy customers, and makes the world a better place…is success.

I never imagined it would have taken this long. Having driven a startup for nine years with every ounce of energy I had, I never anticipated that it would take 431 days to regain the confidence it takes to again present my work to the world.

What I learned is that time was the most important ingredient in my healing. Like being in a massive accident, it took months for my heart, body, and mind to recover.

Unrecognizable at the time, I needed to unplug from the world. I needed to travel. I needed the startup community’s encouragement. I needed to talk about what I had been through. I needed to spend hours writing and days reflecting with the love of my life. I even needed a beautiful new baby boy to show me life’s simplicity.

I needed all of that to give me the confidence to stand back up and return to the ring.

Standing here again, it means more than ever before. And not because I’m more determined or hungrier to succeed.

But because this time I know what I’m standing for. I understand my purpose and why I’m here. I value the importance of living life. I appreciate the unwavering support of love. I deeply recognize that this time around, it’s about enjoying the journey.

There comes a point in everyone’s life where getting back up seems impossible. When the pressure of the world, seems too great to shoulder again. And although only you can pick yourself back up, I hope this provides a little bit of inspiration on your quest.

I never thought about it that way. In all of my time at Contour I was never afraid. Like a teenager falling in love for the first time, I had never had my heart broken.

Which means I never protected myself. I went running into the relationship with everything I had, never expecting that the result would crush me. I trusted those around me, doing everything that was best for the business. Sacrificing both personally and professionally, I was all in.

I still remember my last day. Like a boxer getting punched in the mouth, I can still taste the blood on my tongue. Even after 14 months, it doesn’t go away and I’m not sure I ever want it to. It is a lesson I will rely on the rest of my life.

If you read about the best fighters, they always talk about fear. They recognize that every time they compete they have to overcome their natural instincts to quit.

Even for a big wave surfer, conquering fear is part of life.

“When you overcome the fear and all the elements that are working against you and ride one of those waves, there is a feeling of gratification and accomplishment that is beyond words.” – Greg Long

Getting back up as an entrepreneur is no different. You have to forget what happened in the past and be willing to put yourself out there again to compete. Especially the second time around, you have to find a way re-approach the world with the same naive spirit. Because it’s the only way to see an opportunity that you believe in.

Being Vulnerable Again
Willing to be in love again is really hard. Forgetting about the past, it takes even more to rebuild the trust that was lost. And yet to love again requires you to be vulnerable. It requires you to let down your guard and let people back into your life.

Being vulnerable is also the most important ingredient in creating and yet it can the hardest decision to make. Willing to tell the world what you believe in, even if others disagree, does take courage. The risk of being rejected is always there, no matter how much practice you have.

For me I started back at the beginning. I spent time reflecting on what makes me the happiest in life. Starting with lists of activities, experiences, and moments, it took a while to discover that what makes me happy, is building. I love starting from a blank piece of paper to imagine something new. I love being passionate about the people, problem, and brand we craft. I love the nervous feeling of putting myself out there. I love building things that people can believe in. I love to create.

And as Steve Jobs so eloquently said, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

One Small Step At A Time
The bigger the cliff grows in our imagination, the harder it is to jump off.

As a kid I used to compete in diving. Slightly terrified of heights, I can still remember the anxiety of moving from three meters, to five meters, and eventually to 10 meter platform. Constantly afraid I would slap the water, I eventually quit. Not because I didn’t love it. But because I had built the height up in my mind to the point that it became too high to jump.

Starting is the hardest part. The first step, the first idea, or even the first date. And yet taking one small step at a time is how you get there. Even if your vision far exceeds your ability to deliver on it today, don’t worry about it. Greatness is never an overnight success. It is always a journey woven with an unlimited number of experience that contribute to where you end up.

My first step back was writing. At first only for myself, I slowly started publishing. One post at a time I gained more confidence, week by week. I attended Startup Weekend to get my hands dirty again building products. I taught a class about turning an idea into a company, which gave me the confidence to create a series of workshops about building hardware startups. Which lead me to finding a new collection of builders to begin my next journey.

Opening my heart back up I have begun to create again. Starting in August, with a small team, we moved from ideas to sketches to prototypes to Kickstarter. Not knowing if we would fail or succeed, we jumped.

And it worked.

Our success in the first week is not a testament to our abilities as a team. Instead it is a reflection of our willingness to be vulnerable. We are perfectionist and yet we put our prototypes out there for the world to reply.

Startups love to compare themselves to other startups. The race to win has resulted in a culture that copies, recycles, hurries, and defends itself with little thought to the question: How will we be remembered?

What Beyonce has shown us in the past few days is nothing short of amazing. Her willingness to challenge the music industry has resulted in unprecedented results. Even with record-breaking iTunes downloads it’s not the numbers that are the most inspiring part, it’s how she did it.

Her path wasn’t about differentiating from the competition. It wasn’t about launching her MVP, followed by more songs to come. It wasn’t about getting to market faster than an anyone else. It wasn’t about creating a new business model. It wasn’t about exclusive deals, marketing partnerships, or big bang PR.

Instead she did everything you aren’t supposed to do.

She took an unlimited amount of time to craft her record. She told her own story in her own way. She made her music only available through one store. She spoke directly to her own fans. She was completely vulnerable in her honesty.

And it worked.

Listening to her story has inspired me to remember that what we are building in companies is so much deeper than the products we create or the cultures we leave behind. They are imprints on the history of time.

Thank you Beyonce for reminding me of these important lessons.

1. Success Isn’t Overnight

“At the end of the day, when you go through all of these things. Is it worth it?” ~ Beyonce

The results of the last five days were 23 years in the making. As a nine-year-old, on the TV show Star Search, she learned a lesson I believe she has never forgotten.

“The reality is, sometimes you lose. You never are too good to lose. You are never too big to lose. You are never too smart to lose. It happens and it happens when it needs to happen. And you have to embrace those things.”

Losing my mom and my company are experiences I will never forget. They have forever changed who I am. And those experiences are so ingrained in my soul that they drive me to make every day matter.

Beyonce is here because she never gave up.

2. Be Willing To Share Your Story

”It’s important we made this a movie, we made this an experience.” ~ Beyonce

Starting a company is an incredibly vulnerable journey. It requires you to go against the cultural grain to create when everyone tells you that it can’t be done. And out of that drive comes a personal story. It’s a story you may not fully understand or even be willing to share, but nonetheless it is a story that belongs to you.

Beyonce’s album reflects her willingness to share the most personal parts of her story. Which makes the entire discussion not about the music or the features or the quality, but instead about her narrative. She captivates you with images and words that can’t be challenged, just accepted.

The best part is that her story is honest. She uses simple language in a conversational format that creates an instant connection with the audience. She knows not everyone will listen, but those who do, will be the customers she pours her heart into.

3. Have A Purpose

“At this point in my life that is what I’m striving for: Growth, love, happiness, fun. Enjoy your life, it’s short.” ~ Beyonce

Beyonce’s story comes full circle in this release. Through her victories and her struggles you learn that her motivations are both internal (love, happiness, fun) and external (changing people’s lives).

Having a purpose in the startup world is hard. The culture is built around ideas instead of meaning. Which is best exemplified by everyone’s two favorite questions: What do you do? and How big can this be?

Surround yourself with creators who first ask why you do it.

4. Your Customers Are All That Matter

“I didn’t want to release my music the way I’ve done it. I am bored with that. I feel like I am able to speak directly to my fans. There’s so much that gets between the music, the artist and the fans.” ~ Beyonce

I remember when our sales team used to tell me that GoPro’s strategy to focus on their customer first, and retailers second, was a mistake. Even though they committed high treason (selling on their own website before selling to retailers), they were right in making their product available wherever and whenever their customer demanded, regardless of what the retailer wanted them to do.

Beyonce did the same thing. She bucked the trend and demonstrated that if you focus on what is best for your customers, the rest will work itself out. Target is so angry they even went on record with a bullshit quote that if you read through the lines, can be translated to mean: All we care about is our bottom line.

“At Target we focus on offering our guests a wide assortment of physical CDs, and when a new album is available digitally before it is available physically, it impacts demand and sales projections,” ~ Target spokesperson Erica Julkowski

The people who buy and consume your product are the customer. Make every decision by putting them first, everyone else second.

5. Brand Awareness > Distribution
In an over-saturated society that communicates in 140-character sound bites, Beyonce demonstrated that brand awareness trumps distribution. By concentrating all of her marketing power towards a single store she proved that capturing consumer mind share is all that matters.

A lot of startups get hung up on partnerships and distribution deals that, on paper, promise incredible exposure for your small brand. These deals generally result in spending all of your time shouting at a partner that didn’t deliver. Instead, you can take that valuable time and those limited resources and use them to be obsessed with how to impact more customers.

It has taken Beyonce 23 years, but she has created a movement that is tidal wave in size.

Conclusion
If you are building something I challenge you to look outside the startup world to find your inspiration. Spend time with yourself, understand what really makes you happy, and from that your best work will emerge.

I’m just starting that path now and although I’m terrified about where it will lead, creators like Beyonce give me hope that if you put your heart on the line amazing things will happen.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~ Albert Einstein

It was well past 5pm and we were still at the office debating about how we should inspire our customers. We were debating the strategy to ‘be like Mike‘ or to ‘be like Joe.’

To be like Mike, meant we would only use famous influencers to inspire our customers to purchase the product. The videos would need to be jaw-dropping and amazing, filled with never-before-seen action by names familiar within the sport.

To be like Joe on the other hand, meant our customers’ personal videos would be the marketing. Instead of showcasing professionals we would make it easy for our customers to share their own videos online, resulting in their friends buying the product because they were so inspired by the timeliness [I would choose a different word here. “Timeliness” means “at the right time” or “in season”] of their videos.

Five years later and the category lost, it turns out the right answer was to be like Mike.

Over the years we came to realize that, for most of us, making an amazing video is really hard. Consumers are reluctant to share once they watch their own footage and realize that they rode a lot slower, their drops were a lot smaller, and the sounds were worse than they remembered.

In the end consumers were more inspired by the perception of what they could create versus the reality of their results.

So why is this?

You can find a wide variety of opinions about how perceptions are formed and why we create them. But the simplest answer is that perceptions are a form of stereotyping, which we use to recognize the patterns we want to see. These patterns can enable us to quickly draw conclusions that may or may not capture the truth of the situation.

Seymore Smith, an advertising researcher from the 1960s, found that people were screening what they saw based on their own expectations. In his research he noted that, “They do so because of their attitudes, beliefs, usage preferences and habits, conditioning, etc.” Seymore went on to conclude that people who like, buy, or are considering buying a brand are more likely to notice advertising than are those who are neutral toward the brand.

Seymore’s conclusion is powerful. It supports the notion that the more consumers that see your advertising in a favorable light, the more likely they are to buy. This helps to validate the old marketing adage, The Rule of Seven.

In cases where consumers were familiar with the category, gimmick advertising had a negative impact on their perception of the brand. While in cases where consumers were less familiar, they gravitated to commercials that used phrases they didn’t understand, assuming those phrases must be important.

In their conclusion they found that: “…puffery seemed to influence people who are not major consumers of your type of product, but it turns consumers away who are experts or have higher knowledge.”

The study didn’t conclude why this happens, but its findings begin to provide some insights into how you can engage your existing customers, while inspiring potential customers that have yet to hear about your brand.

If you are struggling with how to inspire your customers here are three things you can do.

Find Their Motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is a great tool as you think about what motivates your consumers to use your product. More often than not, they are driven by a need to belong or a need for esteem. Axe taps into the masculine need to belong, while Land Rover provides an instant status symbol.

Sell Emotion
It’s easy to fall into a trap of telling people what you do. You’re so proud of your own product that you want to tell everyone the benefits associated with it. Instead, look at how brands like Red Bull, Patagonia, and Nike sell the emotion that their products are associated with. It’s not about the performance of the product, it’s about the lifestyle of the person using the product.

Stretch Their Imagination
This is the hardest of all, but stretch consumers minds with all the ways they could use your product. Pencil’s new video shows people using their product in a variety of ways, while GoPro displays videos that are well beyond what the average user can create. People fall in love with the potential.

As you think about winning a category and grabbing consumer mindshare, get uncomfortable with perception. If you don’t care about being the largest in your market and you only want to market exactly what your product does, than you better consistently deliver the most amazing product in the category. Otherwise you will be fighting the battle over minute features that no one cares about.

Perception
Cell phones will better connect us.

Reality
They distract us from being present.

Perception
Fast food burgers are delicious.

Reality
They are a combination of bread and overcooked meat.

Perception
Drink this beer and you will be like this guy.

Reality
This girl to guy ratio is about right.

Perception
Your surfing videos will look like this.

Reality
When you aren’t the best surfer in the world and don’t have a professional video crew.

Perception
This car is for driving to amazing, desolate locations.

Reality
Most owners just take the car to Safeway.

Perception
Amazing athlete.

Reality
Teenager who also likes to party.

Perception + Reality
Capturing the essence of what people think will happen.

I can still remember the last Board call like it was yesterday. For the first time in my life I was out of options. There was nothing left to try. No person to reach out to. No ideas available.

It was the end of my journey and I knew it.

We were short two million dollars and the choices on the table were between awful and shitty.

Awful would have meant reducing the size of the company, immediately, and working hard to keep both our bank and suppliers on board as we forced ourselves to be profitable overnight. Shitty was accepting terms that basically sold control of the company for $2M.

Sitting on that call, I didn’t actually know what to do. Say yes, let the team fight another day, and move on. Say no, risk destroying the deal, and get removed anyway.

I said yes.

The call ended. I packed my bag and walked out the door to a crisp, sunny Seattle day. My day was done and my time at Contour was over.

When a relationship ends it’s so matter of fact. There isn’t a gradual ending, it just stops. There are no more emails, no more late night text messages, no more phone calls. No more collaborating on hard problems, stressing about tough decisions, or excitement from success. Like traveling alone on a dark night in a foreign country, nobody cares who you are. Nobody even asks.

It has taken me a long time to reflect on what happened that day. The following weeks were filled with emotion: Anger, disbelief, frustration, and longing. I was beyond exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. My heart hurt while my mind kept replaying every wrong turn we took along the way.

I was lost.

The last time I felt this was when my mom passed away. Even though I watched her battled cancer for 15 years it was still incredibly hard to deal with her loss. She was always there, until she wasn’t.

I had so many chances to say goodbye, but I never did. As if I didn’t want her to know I had given up the fight, I never said I will miss you.

I wish I had.

Walking back into Contour several weeks later to say goodbye, was one of the hardest moments of my life.

After nine years, my ending was reduced to a rushed company meeting. Paying to park on the street like every other visitor, even the new admin at the front door didn’t know who I was. There would be no party and no celebration. There wouldn’t even be a sincere thank you.

All I was provided was a few minutes with the team, to say goodbye.

Holding back the tears I slowly told them the story about Contour, how proud I was of our accomplishments, and how thankful I was to everyone involved. The team in front of me was an incredible group of people, many of which I would never see again. In a few minutes I tried to express what the last nine years had meant.

Twelve months later I realize that being fired from Contour was one of the best things that could have ever happened. It forced me to end a relationship that I didn’t want to end, and with it, taught me incredible lessons I never would have learned.

Have a Purpose
I realize now that I didn’t have a clear purpose in starting Contour. I replaced my quest for being a professional soccer player with the emotional demands of being an entrepreneur. I wasn’t passionate about making videos. Instead, I became incredibly passionate about building a company.

Aligning the problems I want to solve with what I love to do is how I will start every company going forward. Life is too short to be solving problems I don’t care about.

Enjoy the Journey
I missed the ride. I spent my 20s behind a laptop so focused on the end that I missed everything in between.

Learning to surf has reminded me of what I missed at Contour. The struggle to get better is the journey. There is no trophy at the end, just a collection of memories.

Be Vulnerable
I always led with passion and although it can inspire people around you, it’s not the same thing as being vulnerable. Opening your heart to tell people what you believe in is way harder. Because having your beliefs rejected takes a lot more determination than hearing that your ideas suck.

If you are willing to share what you believe in you will find others who see life the same way. It won’t happen overnight, but slowly you will find a group of people you connect with. A year later I have a closer group around me than at any point in my nine years at Contour.

Prioritize Life
People talk about “work-life” balance. I still think that is a terrible way of saying what I think they mean to say, which is that life doesn’t have borders. There is no “work” and “life,” it’s all life.

You choose to start a company or take a job. You choose to prioritize emails over family time. You choose to miss your friends events for company assignments. You choose to skip vacations. You choose not to be present.

I made a lot of choices during my time at Contour that prioritized the work over everything else. I can’t say I won’t make these same choices in the future, but this time I will deeply understand that they are choices I am making.

Make choices that make you happy in life and the rest will work itself out.

It’s Not About You
It wasn’t until the music stopped that I fully understood that the success of Contour wasn’t about me. It was about a collection of people who poured their heart and soul into a company they believed in.

Don’t underestimate the people around you. If you don’t give them a chance to rise to the occasion, they never will.

A Year Later
I am incredibly happy.

I have an amazing wife whose unwavering love inspires me to be the best husband I can be. We have a beautiful baby boy whose ability to forget the past, constantly reminds you about the present. And we have a family of people who love and support us with every decision we make.

As an entrepreneur I get to start over. With a clean sheet of paper I get to take everything I learned in my nine years and make the world a better place.

Contour changed my life. And being fired will never let me forget what’s most important: Being happy.

This is my last post about Contour. Over the last year I’ve tried to share what I learned and going forward I will be writing about what is happening in the present, not the past. Thanks for reading.

The lights were low and the energy was high. Techstars demo day had finally arrived, and for the 11 Seattle teams it was their opportunity to finally share their vision.

You could see how nervous the entrepreneurs were. Having practiced for weeks, they had no idea how the audience would respond.

With each slide of their pitch, the entrepreneurs got stronger. Their nervous energy was replaced with confidence, as if they finally believed in their own words. Overcoming their deepest fears, each of them left the stage with a massive smile.

Not everyone believes in accelerators. Some have called them startup factories. Others claim they produce a high quantity of low quality companies. Some refer to them as popularity contests.

Regardless of your perspective about accelerators, there is something you can’t deny: They provide opportunity. They provide a platform, especially for first-time entrepreneurs, to gain confidence.

Because it takes incredible courage to stand on a stage, in front of people you don’t know, and put your heart on the line. To share how you want to make the world different is hard, all while being judged about your ability to deliver on it.

@Bryce is right, most people won’t. They won’t try to come up with a new idea. They won’t quit their job to start a company. They won’t make themselves vulnerable to others. Most difficult of all, they won’t stand in front of a room to be openly judged.

It’s true, most of the teams that went on stage won’t ultimately be successful. And it’s easy to tell them so. But don’t.

Being an entrepreneur takes incredible conviction and at the same time, unwavering confidence. Convincing customers, future employees, investors, partners, vendors, editors, etc., requires every ounce of energy you have. Because that battle doesn’t happen just once, it happens every day.

Sitting in the audience that day, I couldn’t help but be inspired. Watching a group of people put their heart on the line, it left me wanting to get up and stand on that stage again. To feel butterflies in my stomach and my heart racing, unsure how the world will react to what I believe in. It’s a feeling that can’t be explained, only experienced.

I miss it.

To the people willing to stand on a stage and tell the world what you believe in, keep going. Whether you turn your ideas into a successful company doesn’t matter. All that really matters is you are willing to do what most people won’t: Put your heart on the line.

Hardware is a cash flow business. It takes money to get to market, and even more money to scale your company. This means that your funding strategy is second in priority only to creating an amazing product.

I got the funding strategy wrong at Contour.

Despite being a $30 million business with award-winning growth (#7 on the Inc500, we couldn’t properly fund the business. Being number two in a fast-growing category wasn’t enough as every investor wanted to lead the market, not follow it. In the end Contour ran out of money, which is still mind blowing when you consider that the company had hundreds of thousands of customers.

Contour losing the category wasn’t a result of the decisions made at the end. In reality Contour lost almost two years before when our competitor raised $80M to our $5M. It was at that point that we should have stepped back and re-thought our strategy, but instead we plowed forward and assumed number two could get just as much funding. We couldn’t.

A lack of proper funding prevented us from fulfilling customer demand, growing brand awareness, and staying in front of the innovation curve. Our lead in product quickly deteriorated as a lack of cash prevented us from moving the business forward.

In the end I learned a very painful lesson: Your funding strategy is critical to your survival. Get it wrong and you go out of business. Get it right and you can become super successful.

If you are building a hardware startup, here is a guide to help you think about how to fund your company.

Getting to Market
I’m a big believer that a successful minimal viable product (MVP) in hardware is all about the fastest path to cash. It’s definitely not about over promising features and under delivering on quality. Instead it’s about picking a single feature and not only delivering it amazingly well, but quickly.

A solid hardware MVP should cost $500K or less to get to market. That includes any tooling, engineering, design, brand, and people costs. If you are spending more than that, limit the features. This is true especially if you are a first-time hardware entrepreneur because you want to keep your MVP simple to limit your cash exposure.

If, during the process, you create enough momentum to raise more than $500K, then great. But most likely you will be scratching and clawing your way to complete this first round.

You can raise this initial capital in a combination of ways.

Friends and Family: Finding $50-100K from close relationships is a great place to start. With this amount of capital your goal is to validate your idea by creating a solid prototype.

Supplier: The costs of getting a supplier off the ground is your most expensive hurdle. Depending on the complexity of your product, tooling will run you $50-200K, engineering services could be up to $50K, and test fixtures another $25-50K. To help minimize your cash requirements you will want to negotiate with your supplier to roll these fees into your per unit cost. Without a track record, this isn’t easy, but if successful it can dramatically change the amount of capital you need to raise.

Consulting Firms: You will need design and engineering services to produce a great product, which means if you don’t have those skills on the team you can outsource this to a consulting firm. Often this can be cost prohibitive, but it’s worth finding a firm that will be creative in cash requirements to help you get to market. With Contour we found a design firm that charged us $50K for the work and then a $3 per unit royalty until the bill was paid. It was a risky proposition for them, but it worked out as we paid them the full $350K over two years.

Pre-Sales: Whether you use Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Dragon, or your own website, pre-selling your product can drive significant cash flow. Even after your campaign ends you can continue taking pre-orders on your own website to increase the amount of cash you raise. Only pre-sell your product once you have a supplier on board and a firm understanding of the schedule.

Angel Investors: Are not easy to convince before you have pre-selling momentum. A lot of hardware entrepreneurs assume that angel investors will give them capital as they reach development milestones. The reality is most won’t, especially when most hardware prototypes look like crap. Unless you have pre-existing relationships, the best time to approach angels is after you have a prototype and momentum from your pre-sales.

Crowd Funding Equity: Now that you can publicly raise capital, both Angel List and your own customers become potential sources of equity capital. This form of capital raising is still in its infancy, but the startups finding success appear to have solid momentum both in media attention and customer interest.

Venture Capital: There are a handful of funds participating in seed rounds, based on the quality of your prototype and the momentum of your pre-sales. You often don’t get a second chance at the same funds so unless you have a previous relationship or incredible momentum, I would save these discussions for your next round of funding.

If you end up raising equity dollars I recommend using a convertible note that converts into your Series A round, using standard series seed docs. Be sure to give yourself enough time to complete the series A round (up to 24 months) with an automatic conversion for investors, as you can’t afford a massive cash outlay down the road.

To reward your earliest investors you can change the discount they receive off the Series A depending on when they invest. For example you can raise the first $100K with discount X to complete your prototype and the remaining $400K with discount Y, after you pre-sell your product. Whatever you do, keep it simple!

A few things to keep in mind:

Terms with your supplier will be an ongoing discussion. If you can get momentum with investors they may be willing to give you better payment terms.

Don’t over promise to increase your pre-sales results. It may help to increase the amount of cash you collect up front from customers, but if the product is poor quality or significantly late, you could have an even larger problem down the road.

Build your financials projections and product pricing based on today’s costs. Don’t make decisions based on what your product will cost at volume, or you risk running out of cash as soon as you ship your pre-sales.

Reaching Market Fit
Now that your product is shipping you begin to control your own destiny. Although your actions are still dictated by how much cash is in the bank, you can begin to think about how much capital is required to reach product market fit, an important milestone in validating that you have a profitable, repeatable business model.

At Contour it took us two years, and two iterations on the hardware, to reach market fit. Not until our product was under $300 and High Definition (HD) did customer demand go through the roof. Overnight the company went from $2M and unprofitable to $7M and very profitable. Despite making dozens of mistakes, we reached market fit with less than $1.5M in capital raised.

The right amount of capital to raise depends on the complexity of your product and the cost to acquire new customers. As a general rule of thumb it can take from $0 to $10M in capital to reach product market fit.

You should consider the following to calculate the right amount of capital.

Product: After shipping an MVP you need to follow up quickly with version 2 to fix all the bugs and poor customer interactions. You’ll want to calculate what it costs in people and production to make your existing product F*#$ing great.

Customer Love: A key part to reaching market fit is having customers that can’t stop using your product. Understand what it takes to fully engage your existing customers, including offering amazing customer support.

Cost to Acquire Customers: One of the hardest parts of making a successful hardware business is profitably reaching new customers. You need enough capital to try a variety of tactics with financial systems to measure which are and aren’t working.

Working Capital: Your most important cash consideration is your working capital (the time between collecting cash and paying your supplier). Managing your cash flow is critically important as you try to grow from an interesting product to a profitable business.

When you are ready to look for capital you can consider:

Cash Flows: You don’t have to raise money. If your business is driving great cash flows you can use that cash to fund the business.

Debt: Banks will give you about 80 cents for every dollar in receivables and 50 cents for every dollar in inventory. The key is that you have to be profitable. If not, it will be hard to get bank debt.

Factoring Receivables: If you have strong receivables, but are not yet profitable you can factor your AR. It’s insanely expensive, up to 20% interest, but it can work to move cash flow if you get stuck. This is a last resort option.

Your Supplier: Continuing to work with your supplier to improve your payment terms is critical to minimizing your cash requirements. You can offer to pay more per unit in exchange for better terms.

Angels: If you are raising a smaller amount, say $1.5M, then you can approach angels, but asking for more will be an uphill climb.

Venture Capital: Find a partner with experience investing in hardware and a belief that founders can become great CEO’s. You want the right partner so don’t make this choice lightly. Once you raise institutional capital, the requirements change dramatically.

Scaling Your Company
If you survived this far, congratulations. Hopefully your cap table is still intact and you have some understanding of what is driving your business.

Your vision for the future, from this point forward, will dramatically change the amount of capital you need to grow your business. If you want to win a category, you need a minimum of $50-100M dollars. If you don’t, you need a highly profitable, cash flowing business so you can invest in product at the same rate as the category leader, without bankrupting your company. Otherwise you will suffer from the Law of Increasing Returns, a fateful result Contour experienced.

After Contour reached market fit I never stepped back and painted the picture of what kind of company we wanted to become. Did we want to be the largest camera company in the world? Did we want to be the category leader for action video? Or did we want to make a small, kick-ass company that was highly profitable?

Because I wasn’t clear about the future, I didn’t raise the right amount of capital. Instead I raised $5M from two small funds, which essentially meant I wanted to win the category, except I didn’t raise enough money from deep enough pockets to do so. Instead I created a situation with mixed expectations and in the end a dynamic that made it very hard to raise future capital.

To calculate the amount of capital required you first have to decide IF there is a category to be won and IF SO, do you want to win it?

If the answer is yes, you need a serious amount of capital to become the brand of choice, and from investors that believe in your same vision. A venture return is not possible if you don’t win the category. Boxee is a great example, they raised almost $30M and in the end couldn’t win the category, so they had to sell for about the same amount that was invested.

If the answer is no, prioritize your business model to be highly profitable, raising as little capital as possible. Selling a $20M business with very little capital raised can be a larger return than falling short on a quest to be the category leader.

The places to look for capital include:

Cash Flows: If you aren’t trying to win the category, continue to optimize your cash flows to keep the business moving forward. You have to keep innovating on the product and creating a sticky brand experience.

Supplier Investment: Either through your existing supplier or through a new supplier, you can explore them investing in your business. Vizio did this early on and it fueled their growth.

Venture Capital: Assuming you have a product, technology, and category advantage this can be the right group. You have to present a path to winning the category.

Private Equity: If you have at least $10M on the top line and 20% on the bottom line, private equity can be an option. Just recognize that they are looking to resell your business in 3-5 years so you have to demonstrate category leadership with minimal technology risk. They want a business that is cash-flowing so they can multiply what is already working.

Strategic Investors: Of all the types of strategic relationships, distribution seems to be the partnership of choice. Either from a brand that can take you into mass distribution (i.e., Monster investing in Beats Headphones) or from a brand that opens up new geographic markets (i.e. Softbank with FitBit).

Conclusion
Success isn’t binary with hardware, which means you don’t have to create a billion dollar company to be successful. Because hardware drives cash, you can create a fantastic company that is small, profitable, and produces amazing products.

All that really matters with funding your hardware startup is that you have a clear picture of the future. And from that picture, find the right capital to fulfill your dreams.